Scan the Flag below, and unveil the tip! Then, leave your comments about what you have discovered. Don't forget to build up your answers and encourage others to reply and chat! More tips are also welcome, OK?

Now, I was just wondering if you could put them in plain English for me, please, so that we can help the staff at the T2 cloakroom at Madrid - Barajas improve these signs, since at the moment, and as Professor Higgins says in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, they 'incarnate insult to the English language'.

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time is a mystery novel
written by Mark Haddon.

In this book the
main character and the narrator of the story is Christopher Boone who is 15
years old and has Asperger Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and
very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth but he
hates yellow and brown.

One night
Christopher finds Mrs Shears’ dog, Wellington, murdered. Mrs Shears is his
neighbour. When he approaches his neighbour’s house he sees that there is a
garden fork sticking out of the dog. Christopher pulls it out and hugs the dog.
Just then Mrs Shear appears and she starts shouting at Christopher since she
thinks he has killed Wellington. When the police arrive they askChristopher
too many questions and too quickly. Consequently he rolls back onto the lawn
and presses his forehead to the ground because there is too much information
coming into his head from the outside world. A policeman takes hold of his arm
and lifts him onto his feet but Christopher doesn’t like being touched so he
hits the policeman.

At the police
station Christopher’s father makes him promise he will stay out of trouble.
However he still wants to know who killed Wellington and, besides that he is
writing a book about the murder so he is continuously asking his neighbours
about the incident.

Nevertheless
Christopher discovers an amazing secret that his father had kept hidden for a
long time.

I think this book
is easy to read but hard to put down. Not only is it a gripping and fast-moving
novel, but it also raises many interesting questions, such as how different life
would be if a member of your family had AspergerSyndrome.

Deaf Sentence is a novel written by David Lodge, which
tells the story of a retired linguistics professor, whose name is Desmond
Bates. He has some difficulties is his daily life due to the fact that he has
to wear ahearing aid since he is
becoming deaf. Through the story, Desmond teaches us how "Deafness is
comic, as blindness is tragic". As a result, he describes some funny
situations and some unfortunate misunderstandings.

The author also describestous,
apart from other topics, how Desmond´s wife, Winifred, manages with his husband
problemsat the same timeas she is so busy in her successful
business, how Desmond is worried about his father,a 89-year-old person with hearing problems
too, and who lives alone far from him, about some linguistics analysis or some
historical aspects about the Eiffel Tower or Auschwitz.

This novel is worth reading since it is a
thought-provoking, moving and funny novel, which youcan'tput down. So, I would recommend it to
anyone who likes enjoyable novels.

If you don't know Auster, maybe you're thinkingof a medieval story with sea
monsters, ships and sailors. You'll be absolutely wrong. InAuster's novel we don't find anything
about monsters, seas or similar things.

On the otherhand there
is a novel, which has the same title and written by Hobbes. ThisLeviathancould have some link with
Auster'sLeviathan.Auster,through his caracters,criticisesthe State, a State which Hobbes conceived
and described in his work in the 17th Century.

The story starts when a man blowshimself up by the side of the road in
Wisconsin. In fact that man is Benjamin Sachs and his story is told by Paul
Aaron, the main character, a writer who knows Sachs, a writer as well, and
tries to explain who Sachs was.

The book is interesting and easy to understand. Maybe
the main trait is that Paul Aaron seems to be an alter ego of Auster. The story
is told inabiographicalway. The characters are a bit complex,
on the other hand the plot is easy. The novel starts as a detective story and
goes down justin the middle
but at the enditis so effervescent and pleasing.

Monday, 7 January 2013

Giles Tremlett is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He
is the Madrid
correspondent for the Guardian newspaper and a regular contributor to The
Economist.He moved around the world from an early age and had his
first taste of Spanish life when he lived in Barcelona for two years in the mid eighties.
After a period in other countries, he returned to live in Spain at the
beginning of the 1992 Olympics. He currently lives in Madrid with his wife.

His book “Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a country’s
hidden past” (2007), was translated into five languages and sold over 100,000
copies worldwide.

In the words of William Grimes, of the New York Times, “Today, a little more than 30 years after
Franco’s death, Spain might well be the happiest country in Europe, with a
robust democracy, a booming economy, dazzling new architectural trophies and a
health-care system that can take credit for Europe’s longest-lived citizens.
The uneasy secret behind the miraculous shifting of gears known as la
Transición (“the Transition”) is an unspoken pact to let the past alone, what
one member of Parliament has called “forgetting by everyone for everyone.””

Of course, these words, written five years ago, are not a
reflection of the current political situation of the country. But what I liked
more of the book is how a foreigner can grasp the spirit of a country and how
we can appreciate better our culture from another different point of view. For
example, the author says “This country is famous for noise”. That sentence is something
I always remember when I have travelled with students to a foreign country. Ten
Spanish students in a wagon can be heard some miles away while a couple of very
little French kids, for example, make almost any noise at all.

“Televisions can stay on in people´s homes all day long”,
says Giles. It’s a real fact. “Spanish love of doing things en masse”,
“gossiping is a national pastime” or explaining what does “enchufe” means (the
art of being `plugged in”) are other sentences that deserve to be taken in
account from this book. And he moves throughout the whole book offering a
guided tour to modern Spain.

It came to me by chance just before Xmas: one of my friends gave me a bunch of books she was going to throw away as a result of some cleaning and the lack of room for them on the shelves.

The Creeper tells the story of two women, Clara and Julia, who inhabit the same house, a beautiful colonial villa in northern Spain, within a century in between. It is written by Josefina Aldecoa.

A century apart means different kind of women: one married to a wealthy older man following the current conventions and the other, the independent buying the house a hundred years later to get away from the city. Two not alike female characters yet so similar in what they struggle for…their own identity.

The narrative space, the house and park, the passage of time marked by the changes in the landscape through the four seasons, affects women and causes both moments of reflection and either reaction or despair.

I enjoyed this vintage reading very much. I found it appealing as you can notice the parallel and the counterpoint of the two women in a very rich, accurate language full of images as that of the creeper which is there for you to discover. Besides it brings nature in and therefore it has an outstanding sensory nuance which I always find delightful.

“La Regenta” is a novel that was written by Leopoldo Alas, “Clarín”. The
novel was first published in 1884. The author used Vetusta (Oviedo) as a symbol
of hypocrisy and ignorance in the Spanish society of the late nineteenth
century.

Ana Ozores is a young, beautiful and cultured woman married to the ex-
magistrate of the city, Victor Quintanar. He is a good, educated man in
his sixties that behaves morelike a father thanlike a husband to her.

As he was appointed regent of Vetusta’s audience, Ana was known worldwide
as “La Regenta”.

She feels physically and spiritually ignored by her husband. He spends his
life hunting, breeding birds and reciting honour passages. Also, she feels
absolutely frustrated in that stupid and hypocritical society.

Trying to solve her hesitations, she makes her confession to the priest
Fermín de Pas, her spiritual guide. He is an attractive powerful
churchman thirty five years old that falls in love with her. She is
horrified and rejectshim. On the other hand, Alvaro Mesía, the leader of liberal Dynastic Party,
a superficial, elegant womanizer, becomes aware of Ana’s attraction to him.
Finally shegives into his advances and keeps an adulterous affair
with him.

When the priest realizes that,he manages to awake Ana’s husband. As the heroes
of the Spanish dramas he challenges Alvaro to a duel but is killed by a shot.
Then Mesía abandons Ana and the city.

Saturday, 5 January 2013

The book I have read is titledMother
Tongue, and itwas
writtenby Bill Bryson twenty
years ago.

Basically, it is an essay about English and the way
this language was growing along the centuries, from its origin to our days,
when it has become the most important language in the world. In fact, the
author tries to explainto us
the different factors that have contributed to get English in the first
position above alllanguages.
Furthermore, the book is full of curious details that make readingitquite
interesting.

In my opinion,Mother Tongueshould be read by all the students who
want to learn English because it could help them to understand everything
regarding this language in a better way.

After having seen the first and second seasons of the TV series “A Song of Ice and Fire”, which was recommended to me by my friend Javier, I could not wait until the next season and I decided to buy “A storm of swords”, which is the third book in a series of seven written by the New Jersey writer George R.R. Martin (sometimes referred to as GRRM).

I was very intrigued by the story and I was anxious to know what would happen with the main characters in the series.

The book picks the story up slightly before the end of its predecessor, “A Clash of Kings.”

The situation at the beginning of the book is the following: the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are still in the War of the Five Kings, with the remaining kings (Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy, Joffrey Baratheon, and Stannis Baratheon) fighting to secure their crowns.

Civil war is destroying the common people. The ruling House of Baratheon and the major houses of Westeros include the following: House Arryn of The Vale, House Baratheon of Storm's End, House Greyjoy of the Iron Islands, House Lannister of Casterly Rock, House Martell of Dorne, House Stark of Winterfell, House Tully of Riverrun, and House Tyrell of Highgarden.

Stannis Baratheon's attempt to take King's Landing has been defeated by the new alliance between House Lannister (backing King Joffrey) and House Tyrell.

House Martell has also pledged its support to the Lannisters through the forces of Dorne.

Meanwhile, a large host of wildlings are marching toward the Wall under Mance Rayder, the "King Beyond the Wall", with only the small force of the Night's Watch in its path; and in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen is on her way back to Pentos, hoping to raise forces to retake the Iron Throne.

My Spanish edition of the book is 1.160 pages long and the English paperback version is split into two books.

Even though I do not like reading novels, this book captivated me and I read it in less than a month, because the plot is absolutely fantastic, at least, in my opinion.

Thursday, 3 January 2013

The narrator of this story is David Zimmer, a
literature professor who has recently lost his wife and two sons in a
tragic plane crash. He escapes from the world and spendshis days drinking and watching
television. He divorced society, quit his job and broke all contact with the
people in his life.

One day he laughed while hewas watching a Hector Mann's movie ontelevision. That moment made him
realize that there was still something inside him that wanted to live and he
realized he needed something to occupy his mind with. So he decides to write a book
about Hestor Mann and his movies. However Davis is unable to explainHector Mann'sdisappearance in 1929.

Aparently therewas no
reason to disappear, Hector Mann has a promisingcareer, he was handsome and popular
withwomen. After publishing the
book a friend from the past called and asked him to do a traslation of a French
writer, Chateaubriand. David Zimmer also received a letter from Frida Spelling
claiming to be Hector Mann's wife. She said she had read the book and wanted to
know if he would like to come to New Mexico and meet Hector.

David initially believed the letter to be a fraud,
someone playing a jokeon him.
But he received more letters and he started thinking maybe Hector Mannwas still alive. Soon a woman
called Alma arrived at his house to take him to New Mexico to see Hector by
force if necessary. Almatold DavidHestor Mann's story and why he had disappeared,
how he had caused thedeath of
a woman he loved, he had run away and assumed a new identity. After several jobs he
started working in his lover's family. That set him on the road once more.

At the same time we are following two different
stories: the story of Alma and David and the story of Hector and Frida
Spelling. Both Hector Mannand
David Zimmer are caught up in tragic and destructive events and both are
seeking to find peace, to find a way to live with themselves and the world.

It is a thought provoking and emotionally stimulating
novel. Auster makes the story easy to read and the story holdsyour interest.

On one hand I find the
detailed descriptions of Hector Mann's films tiresome, on the other hand it is
an enjoyable story. On the whole I found reading The Book of Illusions entertaining and
stimulating.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

The book I have just read is titled "What I talk about when I talk about running" and that almost explains
the whole story. It's written by Haruki Murakami and can be considered
as an essay about his passion for long distance running and how this
helps him in his work as a writer.

He does not only talk about running, but also about how it has influenced his way of writing and his life.How something that just started as a way of keeping fit has developed as
a key for his success as a novelist and how this practice fits with his
character. He schedules all the trainings in order to get to the next
race in the best conditions even now that he is in his 60`s.

The pages of the book are filled with anecdotes and feelings in which everyone who has ever run may see themselves reflected.
And something that stroke me was the fact that he does NOT recommend running to anyone. He claims that it is something you should do only if you want to. That is the way to enjoy running.